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		<header>
			<h1>Moving forward</h1>
			<p>Day 01486: <time>Monday, 2019 April 01</time></p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/04/01.jpg" alt="Quadplex" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="weirdo">
	<h2>Weirdo</h2>
	<p>
		I passed some angry weirdo on the bike path, and they started yelling at me.
		They asked who the fuck I am, and not understanding where their anger was coming from, I just asked &quot;What?&quot;.
		They just repeated, asking me again who the fuck I am.
		I&apos;m not going to tell random, angry strangers who I am, so I just asked what they mean.
		This time, they asked me &quot;Who the fuck are you people!?&quot;, as if I was a part of some group they were having a problem with.
		Genuinely confused, I asked them what people they meant.
		That pissed them off further.
		They called me an idiot, claimed I don&apos;t even know what people are, then told me to get out of there and go fuck my mother.
	</p>
	<p>
		Wow.
		Angry much?
		I think they must&apos;ve been crazy though.
		I&apos;m not sure what else would make them think I was part of some group, then claim I don&apos;t know what people are when I can&apos;t figure out which group they&apos;re referring to.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="hair">
	<h2>Hair removal</h2>
	<p>
		Last time I tried to look into <abbr title="light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation">laser</abbr> hair removal, I was given a few leads.
		Most weren&apos;t helpful, and they wouldn&apos;t repeat them after I pulled out my laptop to jot them down even if they had been.
		I remembered a couple and took note, but most were lost.
		They did give me the names of two specific places though, one of which sounded like the name of a dentists&apos; office.
		When I looked up the websites of those places, I found both blocked me.
		I later had to reset <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> due to some network connectivity issues, and the site of the place that didn&apos;t sound like where you&apos;d get dental work done stopped blocking me.
		The two places were on different streets, so I decided to pay a visit to the one that doesn&apos;t seem to be trying to maliciously block all of <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> today.
	</p>
	<p>
		I had some trouble finding the place, and ended up going way too far.
		I ended up seeing the other place, which was nearby.
		I contemplated stopping by, but reconsidered.
		When I tracked down the right building, I found they were closed.
		I&apos;d brought my laptop due to there being a coupon on the website, so I pulled it put and checked out the hours on the other page I luckily still had pulled up.
		It turns out they&apos;re not even open on Mondays.
		I just assumed they would be, and hadn&apos;t even attempted to check out their hours.
		My bad.
	</p>
	<p>
		Not wanting to have wasted the trip, I dropped by the other place.
		The person there threw a lot of numbers at me, and I couldn&apos;t keep track of them all.
		It sounded like it&apos;d be almost five hundred dollars each for the first six sessions, then much cheaper for the remaining two sessions they thought I&apos;d likely need due to male facial hair being hard to get rid of.
		However, the total would come to about two grand, as they put it.
		That was too much.
		I&apos;d try back at the other place tomorrow, then come back to this place to book if I had to.
	</p>
	<p>
		As I was mounting my bike, I realised that it was only two thousand dollars, which is about what I&apos;d expected after my initial research on estimated cost without a specific treatment provider in mind.
		&quot;Grand&quot; just makes it sound so much more than &quot;thousand&quot; does.
		If you throw the word &quot;grand&quot; at me, I&apos;m going to think it&apos;s much more until I&apos;ve had a few minutes to process it.
		It&apos;s one of those weird mind issues that can be used against me unintentionally very easily.
		It&apos;s comparable to how when many people see that something cost four hundred ninety-nine dollars, somewhere in their brains, they see it as costing four hundred dollars, not five hundred.
		I don&apos;t get it myself, as I automatically round everything up.
		Even if something&apos;s only a dollar forty-nine, I think of it as costing two dollars unless I&apos;m manually trying to calculate a total.
	</p>
	<p>
		Tomorrow&apos;s going to be a pain.
		I guess I&apos;ll go try to talk to the other hair-removal place.
		Their website said it only cost one hundred dollars for treatment.
		I&apos;m guessing that&apos;s per treatment, not for the full course needed to actually get rid of the hair, but that could still save me a lot of money.
		Plus they&apos;re not maliciously blocking <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> on their website, so I&apos;d rather give them money than give the other place money.
		After that, I&apos;ll need to run my regular Tuesday errands.
		There&apos;s going to be no time to rest before work, and likely no time to even finish my journal entry before work.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Summer">
	<h2>Summer</h2>
	<p>
		On the way home, I started getting very frustrated with Summer again.
		I just kept thinking and planning where to go from here.
		Eventually, my plan evolved into giving her a choice to make.
		She&apos;d have three options.
	</p>
	<p>
		If she wants a good relationship with me, she can find a way to look past my penis and see me as something more than it.
		She can stop insisting I&apos;m a man, and she can stop referring to me as a &quot;he&quot;, as her son, et cetera.
		She won&apos;t go for this option until she hears the other two, and probably won&apos;t go for it even then.
		But it&apos;s on the table.
	</p>
	<p>
		If she wants a bad relationship with me, she can call me &quot;Dick&quot; instead of &quot;Alex&quot;.
		She thinks of me as a penis, so she can be honest by openly call me one.
		The name &quot;Dick&quot; also has symbolic significance because of our shared past, which would further drive home the point.
		To choose this option, she also would need to leave me alone at work.
	</p>
	<p>
		The third option is one she&apos;d never choose, and pretty much exists just to show her that she has to choose, and but not choosing, she&apos;d be choosing something she probably considers worse.
		The third option is that she can have no relationship with me.
		She&apos;d be allowed to continue using my shower and using my living room for storage of her boxes, but that&apos;d be the extent of our dealings together.
		She could pester me at work if she likes, but it&apos;d go nowhere.
		She could call me whatever she likes, as there&apos;d be no obligations to behave in any particular way.
	</p>
	<p>
		<del>Slow and steady wins the race though.
		These over-the-top gestures aren&apos;t going to help me salvage our relationship if it&apos;s even possible to salvage it at all.
		What I said yesterday still holds: I&apos;m not going anywhere with my mother until her attitude is better.
		Additionally, I think I&apos;ll replace a couple things she&apos;s given me with my name on it for my walls with things that say &quot;Dick&quot; instead.
		It&apos;s symbolic, but not over the top.
		When I have guests, I&apos;ll put back the correct name, but when my mother drops buy unannounced, she&apos;ll both see that what she&apos;s given me is gone and that I clearly think she sees me as a penis.
		Well, the second part won&apos;t be overly clear, but she might guess it and she&apos;ll almost certainly outright ask me what&apos;s going on.
		I&apos;ll make it clear too that it&apos;s the thought that counts, and that the name &quot;Alex&quot; doesn&apos;t mean the same thing to her as it does me.
		Gifts from her with my actual name aren&apos;t welcome, as to her, it&apos;s short only for &quot;Alexander&quot;.</del>
	</p>
	<p>
		<ins>On second thought, there&apos;s probably no way to get her to see reason.
		The only way to make the pain she causes go away is to make <strong>*her*</strong> go away.
		I&apos;ve taken down the things she gave me with my name on them.
		That means something to me symbolically.
		But yesterday, I gave her one last chance to stop hurting me.
		She&apos;s not interested.
		I&apos;m done trying.
		If there&apos;s any chance to salvage this relationship, it has to come from her.
		She&apos;s got to see that she&apos;s lost me.
		That&apos;s just wishful thinking, of course.
		She not going to put in any effort on this.
		She never does.
		She&apos;d rather disown her own children when we disagree with her too much for her liking.
		She disowned Vivian at least twice, if not three times.
		And Cyrus is still disowned; she never made up with him even a first time.
		This time, she&apos;s the one disowned.
		I&apos;ll let he keep using my shower and using my living room for storage, but that&apos;ll be the extent of our dealings.</ins>
	</p>
	<p>
		I thought I could get away without the facial surgery, but it looks like that&apos;s going to have to happen as well.
		I need to stop looking so much like a man.
		Having a penis makes me male, but it doesn&apos;t make me a man, and I wish people would get over it.
		The surgery might help with my mother, but even if it doesn&apos;t, it should make it less likely for others to assume I&apos;m one when they meet me.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="camera">
	<h2>Camera</h2>
	<p>
		My camera&apos;s messing up again.
		In the photograph today, you can see the timestamp claims the date to be yesterday and the time to be nearly midnight.
		By the sky&apos;s colour, you can tell it&apos;s nowhere near midnight though.
		It seems yesterday&apos;s photo was off too, but I didn&apos;t notice at the time.
		I guess I need to start setting the date and time every time before I take a photograph, or something.
	</p>
</section>
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